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There is a much larger problem here that no one seems to be addressing. It is impossible to judge the depiction of Susan without considering the wider issue of how Lewis generally represents women. I enjoy Lewis immensely and have done so since childhood. I have many of his fiction and non-fiction books sitting on my shelf.
However, I love these works in spite of the way Lewis portrays female characters or even discusses women in some of his non-fiction works. (Passages in the Four Loves are also suggestive, but I don't have a copy at home.) I remember being taken aback even as a child when I read the Narnia tales and found out what happened to Susan. Something in my eleven year old head howled "unfair". I was the furthest kid you could imagine from lipstick and party invitations, but I wasn't quite sure that I could measure up to Lucy in spiritual depth and had a bad feeling that otherwise (like Susan) I would be thrown into a literary pit.
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It is Susan who rejects Narnia. And since she's the one doing the rejecting what exactly is unfair about the situation?
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He looked down at her in the twilight and it seemed to him that the lines of grief and cruel hardship were smoothed away. "She was not conquered," he said
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01-04-2008, 01:55 PM
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